Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act

An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness

Sponsor

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith  Liberal

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Report stage (House), as of Oct. 30, 2023

Subscribe to a feed (what's a feed?) of speeches and votes in the House related to Bill C-293.

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

This enactment enacts the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act to require the Minister of Health to establish an advisory committee to review the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada in order to reduce the risks associated with future pandemics and inform a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan.
It also requires the Minister of Health to establish, in consultation with other ministers, a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan, which is to include information provided by those ministers.
Finally, it amends the Department of Health Act to provide that the Minister of Health must appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator from among the officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada to coordinate the activities under the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act .

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Votes

Feb. 8, 2023 Passed 2nd reading of Bill C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness

November 8th, 2023 / 7:40 p.m.
See context

Bloc

Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before the bell rang to call for the vote, at the end of our last meeting, I was saying that I had been very patient. I pointed out that I had signed the request for a meeting under Standing Order 106(4) on November 2, when journalists had already been questioning the Public Health Agency of Canada for a week. I found it curious that just as we were filing this request, the minister, as if by a miracle, started talking.

During our discussions last time, our colleague Mr. Davies said that the role of a parliamentarian was, among other things, to ask questions about governance, but above all to try to control government spending. This is the role assigned to us by our mandates. When a public health agency fails to answer simple questions, it seems to me that it's urgent to intervene.

The last time, the question of urgency was invoked. Now, there was an issue that was becoming increasingly urgent in relation to the management of the pandemic. However, this committee refused an amendment during the study of Bill C‑293 which aimed to establish an independent public inquiry, under which a body could have been set up by a judge which would have had the powers normally attributed to such a commission of inquiry, such as that of subpoenaing witnesses, for example. From the moment the government doesn't want an independent commission of inquiry as the legislation prescribes, and the Public Health Agency of Canada decides not to answer simple questions about contracts, it becomes urgent to intervene.

Is a culture of omerta taking hold at the agency? Do we have to wait for the minister's signal to finally reveal what voters need to know? One hundred and fifty million dollars is not a trivial sum.

I have total respect for institutions, because parliamentary democracy requires respect for institutions. However, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said that, in this case, the refusal to disclose any information about a $150 million loss is highly unusual. He would have expected the department to be able to provide at least some details. In his view, if the department can't or won't reveal the name of the company, it should at least explain the circumstances under which it happened. After all, a $150-million loss on a contract deserves some explanation.

For the benefit of those listening tonight, let me remind you that the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is an institution that is totally independent of the executive.

Kevin Page, the former parliamentary budget officer, said it was a significant total loss. He finds it unacceptable that the Public Health Agency of Canada refuses to answer our questions about how the money was spent or written off.

It seems to me that these opinions should be respected. I'm not motivated by partisanship in saying this.

On the other side of the room, people are implying that there are more urgent things to do and deal with. I'm well aware that the Standing Committee on Health is very busy pursuing its studies and adopting its reports. I myself have waited a long time for the study on breast implants and the creation of a breast implant registry to come to fruition. In fact, we're not far from adopting this report and its recommendations before tabling it in the House.

Our committee is very busy, but that's no reason to overlook an event like this. So I expect we'll agree very quickly that we need to do this study. We can do it as proposed in the subamendment or the amendment; but insofar as possible, I'd like to avoid doing what we did last time—let's not take a whole session to try and convince our colleagues, who still refuse an independent commission of inquiry, that we should go ahead. In fact, we're prepared to rearrange our timetable accordingly, i.e. we can do both: we can spend part of our meetings dealing with routine business, if I can put it that way, and another part dealing with this study. If we could all agree to this, it would be to the benefit of all, and especially the citizens, who are entitled to explanations.

I experienced the management of the pandemic right from the start, during the meetings of the Standing Committee on Health, with Mr. Powlowski and Mr. Davies in particular, if I'm not mistaken. For a week or two, the Standing Committee on Health was the only committee in session. Then the Standing Committee on Finance started sitting too. So it was clear that we were dealing with emergency management. I tried to examine this emergency management and ask questions responsibly. When I agreed to sit on the Standing Committee on Health, the first thing I said was that I would not use health issues to play petty politics, that I would act responsibly. I challenge anyone around the table to find a single statement of mine, after the pandemic happened, that was tinged with partisanship.

Even today, I take the floor not to delay our work, but to try to redirect things a little. It's true that we have our work cut out for us. It's true that we have important matters to deal with. However, it's also true that the Standing Committee on Health must play its role as a check on the executive and question the management of the pandemic, especially since, I repeat, the government doesn't want an independent public commission of inquiry. Yet it could answer questions and shed light on all aspects of the pandemic.

We experienced this situation at the Standing Committee on Health. We told ourselves that it wasn't time to lay blame, but that it was time to succeed in obtaining vaccines and personal protective equipment. Mr. Powlowski was right to say so last time. We were told that the timetable for creating a vaccine, even if we sped things up, even if everyone worked together, would be between two and a half and five years. In the end, it turned out to be much faster. I also remember how, at one point, the opposition parties were urging the government to reserve vaccines. I remember that. We said we should have as wide a range as possible, because we didn't know which vaccines would work. There were various ideas about that.

I don't want to do the job that a commission of inquiry would do. That said, at the start of the pandemic, scientists were telling us how great it was to see information being exchanged and everyone working towards the same goal. Personally, I wondered if it would be like that right to the end. I wondered if, on the day when someone came up with a vaccine, we would continue to exchange all the information and vaccinate the whole planet simultaneously. That's not what happened. Personally, I thought there would be coordination between the World Health Organization and the rich countries, so that what finally happened would not have occurred. In my opinion, in their way of appropriating vaccines, rich countries all over the planet missed the mark.

Of course, there was pressure. The opposition parties were lobbying and asking the government if we were going to come in at the back of the queue. They wondered why the U.S. had received vaccines when we hadn't yet. This led to purchases of vaccines before Christmas, but they cost us much more than they did elsewhere.

You can see that my words are not motivated by partisanship.

I'm only talking about one episode. I remember that all the parties made a joint public statement about temporarily lifting the patents because there was a supply problem. Why were there several variants? Because people did not have access to vaccines in certain parts of the world. Since Canada, as a wealthy country, had access to a variety of vaccines to counter the variants, it began sending vaccines that were almost out of date to other countries. What's more, in these countries, the vaccine deployment chain was not yet organized, not to mention all the constraints this imposed on us. For example, vaccines had to be stored in freezers or kept cold. A lot of resources were wasted, and we couldn't take advantage of the patents to vaccinate the population on the spot. In short, we made a lot of mistakes, all over the planet, during the pandemic.

If we're not willing to rise above partisanship to shed light on the situation we experienced, determine what could have been done better and admit the mistakes we made, how are we going to manage to learn from them? Only a public and independent commission of inquiry could have led to this.

As we know, there was a global information network, which was recognized. How is it that it was ineffective and that some countries on the planet waited for the flag to be raised? Was this the responsibility of a single government, or was it the result of other decisions? A public inquiry would reveal a great deal. Still, we're not going to be able to draw any conclusions, since I don't see any willingness to hold a public, independent inquiry.

As soon as you choose to treat things à la carte, everything becomes urgent. That's effectively what we've decided to do. Because we don't want to create a public and independent inquiry, we'll see the same situation over and over again. Every time a situation arises about which we have questions, and certain government bodies maintain a culture of opacity rather than transparency, we're going to end up with timetables that are upset or mishandled, because we have to shed light on a situation. Now, when you don't want to approve a public inquiry, you can't shed light on a situation 10 years later.

There's one key word to remember from this whole story and from what I've said. When I signed this request for a meeting under Standing Order 106(4), it wasn't because I wanted to filibuster, it was because I wanted us to act with transparency.

The day citizens lose confidence in their institutions, we'll have only ourselves to blame, because we ourselves will have abused our institutions and failed to give them the respect they deserve. We unfortunately experienced this during the pandemic.

Some might consider that my comments are based in political philosophy or a certain conception of the state, and say that the Bloc Québécois, the Conservative Party and the NDP want to delay another very important study, but that's not what's happening. Personally, I'm trying to see if the people on the other side of the table would accept a compromise whereby two subjects would be dealt with at the same time. I'm not going to reveal things that have been said behind closed doors, but could we agree to keep the working arrangement we had behind closed doors the same when the cameras are on? That wasn't the case over the last few weeks, and we've suffered a bit for it. We could establish a work plan that consists of following our schedule while reserving part of our meetings to shed light on this issue, even if it means adding session hours.

I can work hard. I got up at 5 this morning and haven't stopped. I'm here and we're going to finish at 9:30 p.m. That's what people expect of us, to work hard. We worked hard seven days a week during the pandemic and we continue to do so. That's what we're here for and we love it.

So I'd like us to agree to reach our goals by Christmas. We can meet our planned work schedule and still allow ourselves to get to the bottom of this issue by hearing the witnesses who would be subpoenaed pursuant to this motion.

If there were a consensus, and if I understood the suggestions made by Mr. Davies, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Hanley last time, we could hold three-hour sessions. Two hours would be devoted to studying the issues we have agreed to take forward and the reports we have to adopt; the last hour would be devoted to the appearance of a key witness so that we could ask him questions about this unfortunate revelation, and above all, about this attitude we see which consists in saying that nothing will be revealed about it. This attitude is open to criticism, and it's on this that we urgently need to ask questions.

There are people who say we knew very well who it was. In any case, if the Parliamentary Budget Officer didn't know, it wasn't all that clear, even if you can always trace it back and find the information. So it's urgent to ask questions about this culture of opacity and get to the bottom of it.

Mr. Jowhari, last time, was saying that it was wrong to claim that the $150 million had been for nothing, since in the end it had been used to create a vaccine. We're talking about a vaccine that no one will be able to benefit from, but that's a different kettle of fish. It's a matter of interpretation. However, it would be the least we could do to allow us, as parliamentarians, to ask all the questions that need to be asked and to let all the organizations that report to the Minister of Health know that the members of the Standing Committee on Health will not let anything pass. Whenever a problem like the one we've just experienced emerges, we'll set aside time in our work to examine it, because that's our duty. That's what we were elected to do.

I'm going to stop here, because I'm thinking of my colleagues who are listening to me. A consensus seems to be emerging and I want to avoid looking like the one who is unduly delaying the work, which is not my objective. I may speak later in response to an intervention that might inspire me. For now, if my colleagues agree, we could vote on the subamendment, then on the amendment, and finally on the motion. The solution I propose seems to me to correspond to that expressed by Mr. Hanley, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Davies.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

November 6th, 2023 / 11:40 a.m.
See context

Liberal

Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON

The $150 million is not lost. It resulted in a vaccine approved by Health Canada.

What happened subsequently is of interest. Again, since my colleagues like to refer to the media reports, I'd like to quote a February 2, 2023, report from CBC. It reads:

Then in March, the World Health Organization decided not to accept Medicago's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, citing the company's ties to big tobacco. Marlboro cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris International was once a shareholder of Medicago, but divested all of its shares in late 2022.

Can the $150 million be accounted for? Yes. What was it invested in? It was invested in R and D. Did the R and D result in a vaccine being developed that was approved by Health Canada? Yes. Did the business go forward? No. Why? The World Health Organization didn't approve it because of ties to a tobacco organization, which meant that the vaccine that was manufactured was available domestically, but not internationally. That's therefore a business decision by Medicago and Mitsubishi, which is probably worthy of a study.

Now we come to the other part of this. There was $173 million also invested in Medicago for the site expansion, after the approval of the vaccine by Health Canada. It is worthy of study to see whether the $173 million actually went to the site expansion and what the status of that site expansion is.

When we look at this motion and see it's talking about “lost” rather than a business loss, it raises questions. When we see unfulfilled contracts, there are grounds for us to look and see whether the contract was fulfilled or not. The AG has done that. Whether it's $300 million.... It's not.

Also, the public accounts committee is actually doing this study. The notion of this study as it is in the motion is not acceptable to our side. Based on referring to the media, there are areas that the media has not had the opportunity to explore and that may potentially lead to misinformation.

I'm not going to make any comments on the other.... My colleagues talked about many other items, which we will deal with in the election in 2025.

I want to close by saying that I believe this is another tactic by our Conservative colleagues to delay the study of women's health. Today we were supposed to start the study of women's health. We have the children's health report that is not completed. We have the breast implant report that is due for its second version, with some very good recommendations, which we need to finalize. We have the PMPRB study, which is now going to get pushed back. We have the PPE study, and we know the fate of Bill C-293.

Mr. Chair, there are areas of concern in this motion. I'd like to look at a modified or amended version of this motion for us to be able to bring total clarity to the issue of where the $150 million was spent—we know who spent it and what it was spent on—and the state of the $170-million site expansion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

October 25th, 2023 / 9:25 p.m.
See context

Conservative

Stephen Ellis Conservative Cumberland—Colchester, NS

Thank you very much, Chair.

My deep apologies to the translators. The passion, I'm afraid, overtook me, and I apologize deeply for that.

That being said, why did I wander back to the bill at hand? Because there were accusations around this table that said this was a filibuster to get rid of Bill C-293.

I would love nothing more than to continue to talk about this bill. Sadly, there's something that is way more pressing when 20 Canadians a day are dying; 20-plus Canadians a day are dying because of a failed NDP-Liberal coalition experiment. Unfortunately, the NDP member, who believes himself to be the arbiter of this committee, continues to want to interrupt, even though perhaps, if closer attention was paid to the incredibly important words I'm saying, he would understand the connection to the injustice attempted upon the Conservatives in suggesting that this was a filibuster related to Bill C-293.

That is why I needed to make that connection to the matter at hand, related to homelessness and the ongoing opioid experiment, which continues to be perpetrated, propagated and perpetuated by the petulant Liberals. That causes great consternation for all of us who sit on this side, the Conservative side of the House.

What we know very clearly is that safe supply is a failure. It is a failure, an abject failure. It doesn't matter which euphemism we wish to say about it, whether we want to call it “safe supply” or “safer supply” or “safest supply”. Again, those are the superlatives we have at our use in the English language. Whichever one we want to use, we know that it is an experiment, and we know that it has failed. We know very clearly that this is a lesson from history. Not to be too trite, but we know that those who refuse to listen to, know or believe history are doomed to repeat it.

When we look back at the Purdue Pharma fiasco, at the tragedy, as mentioned in this article, we know very clearly that Purdue Pharma misrepresented the risk of addiction. As this article talks about, there was a systematic effort to minimize the risk of addiction and the use of opioids for the treatment of “chronic non-cancer-related pain”. One of the most critical issues regarding the use of opioids in the treatment of chronic non-cancer pain is the potential of iatrogenic addiction. I'll come back to that.

The article states, “The lifetime prevalence of addictive disorders has been estimated at 3% to 16% of the general population.” When we look at that, what does that mean? It means, for those being prescribed opioids for chronic non-cancer pain, that even by giving them opioids there was a likelihood that they were going to become addicted to them.

Now what are we doing? At the current time, this NDP-Liberal government is not prescribing them carefully in small quantities and in small dosage amounts. They are giving these medications to Canadians for free in large quantities: an incredibly potent opioid called hydromorphone. When we look at that, colleagues, that is anathema to the suggestion that, after the historical tragic events related to Purdue Pharma, we all need to hear the lessons thereof, such that we are now doomed to repeat them, and that is exactly what we shall do.

Mr. Chair, if I may, may I have a point of clarification? If I agree to adjourn this meeting, will I still have the floor when we pick it up next time?

October 25th, 2023 / 8:50 p.m.
See context

Conservative

Stephen Ellis Conservative Cumberland—Colchester, NS

Do you know what? It's fascinating to me that the former Liberal speaker—I don't know if that's the right term, but he certainly was elected as a Liberal—was talking about decorum.

What do we have over here? When it becomes uncomfortable, we have colleagues of mine, who know that this is an incredibly important and difficult topic, wanting to interrupt. I think that is a bit baseless. It is juvenile and incredibly inappropriate that we don't want to talk about the issues that we know are being brought forward because of the policies of the Liberal government.

We know it. Everybody here knows it, and do you know what? It's uncomfortable and it's painful and it's unpleasant, yada yada yada—too bad. Canadians are now uncovering the abscess that exists in their own country, which is that Liberal government, supported by these members across from me, where I'm pointing. They need to grow up and decide what side of history they want to be on. That's their choice.

As I was saying, on the MAID regime, which I sadly had to sit through as a member of Parliament—“sadly” because oftentimes it would appear to me that there was a gleeful nature of the Liberals as they brought forward more and more abilities for Canadians to kill themselves—what we saw there, very clearly, is that depression is in its infancy in terms of diagnosis and treatment. Now we will have a regime in this country that is not supported by Canada's psychiatrists. We know that very clearly.

There is one psychiatrist on that committee who continues to push forward that agenda, and now what do we see? We see other folks who want to take advantage of that and are suddenly saying: “Hey, you know what? People, sadly, are addicted to drugs. Let's let them end their lives.” My colleague here has an interesting article with pictures of people who died of overdoses and pictures of them as children. Everyone around this table and anyone who's listening out there knows that no kid in this country grew up saying, “I wish that, when I grow up, I will be addicted to drugs.”

This safer/safe, government-sponsored, hydromorphone-doling-out-for-free program is allowing them to continue to be addicted to drugs. That is a very sad state of affairs in this country, especially when.... I don't even know how many Liberals there are in the House of Commons. There are too many—I know that. They know the difference, and they refuse to stand up and be counted and to understand that this is an incredibly slippery slope that we are going down.

Not only are we now providing drug addicts with drugs for free—drugs that we know are being sold from the investigative reports of people like Adam Zivo and also from the physicians my colleague named and the letters they've sent to this government, and from other physicians who are too afraid to come forward because they're afraid their professional reputations will be sullied by this Liberal government—but we continue to allow this to happen. Shame, shame, shame. That's what I say—shame.

To go back to this original letter that we have received from Dr. Robert Cooper, which was sent to, again, the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, it says that it is reckless for people suffering from addictions, as it is not supervised to ensure it is taken safely in the manner intended by the manufacturer. Also, it is provided in a way so that it can be and is being sold, with the funds utilized to purchase even more potent and dangerous opioids such as fentanyl.

We hear that this is the enemy: a toxic supply. This is what the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, who came before this committee before, said: that this is a dangerous drug, that it's toxic, but if we give them something else, then they'll stop using fentanyl.

Sadly, we know that is the high the people who are addicted to drugs want. They want a high from fentanyl. All they are doing, very simply, is taking the hydromorphone that is being supplied for free and selling it to kids and other people who have never used opioids before, and they are then buying fentanyl with the money.

This is not a great stretch of imagination or a fantasy or the unicorns and fairy dust that we hear from this Liberal government on other topics. This is fact that is being reported from people who work in the system. This is being reported by people who use the drugs on the street.

Why do I say it slowly? It's because it appears that is the only way it can be heard by my Liberal colleagues. Why is it that we need to talk forever in this committee to get anything through? It's because otherwise there'll be a motion to adjourn the debate on this, which we have already seen.

I shall continue.

It is provided with a reckless disregard for our communities, as it has increased the availability of high-potency pharmaceutical-grade opioids on our streets and increased the number of people suffering from addiction. They are seeing more people. These are addictions experts. This is what they do. They are seeing more and more people coming and saying, “Wow, I have a problem with drugs and—guess what—I had free hydromorphone supplied by the government” or “I got the free hydromorphone supplied by the government, and—guess what I did with it—I sold it and bought something else with it.”

They are selling it. Are they buying more fentanyl? They probably are. Are they trying to live because of the incredible crushing inflation and cost-of-living crisis that this Liberal government has created through their reckless spending? Yes, of course they are. If they can't afford to put a roof over their heads, the likelihood, of course, of their being addicted to opioids is probably greater. If they're addicted to opioids, it is much more difficult for them to put a roof over their heads. Can they feed themselves? They can't do that well. Can they heat their homes? Well, they don't have any homes to heat. We know that very clearly.

Continuing to punish Canadians is what this Liberal government is bent on doing with their NDP coalition partners.

Third, it is reckless, a complete failure of monitoring and supervision, and an abrogation of the responsibility to do so, with an apparent reliance on the criminal justice system to prevent diversion when it is widely known that the criminal justice system has already failed to prevent the sale of opioids during the current opioid epidemic.

Colleagues, one of the things that I think are important for us to begin to understand is how related this epidemic that we have is to the OxyContin crisis. We know very clearly that in popular literature—and if you're not a student of history, you can look at Netflix, on which there is a series called Painkiller. We know very clearly that this tragedy that exists on Canadian and American streets at the current time is realistically related to the promotion and marketing of OxyContin.

There is an interesting article in the American Journal of Public Health entitled exactly that, “The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin: Commercial Triumph, Public Health Tragedy”. This public health tragedy continues.

We know very clearly from this article.... It talks about controlled drugs. It has an American flavour to it and certainly it's not a style that we talk about in Canada, but we talk about opioids. Certainly realistically they are controlled drugs in terms of how they are supposed to be prescribed and given out in a very controlled manner by responsible physicians to those who need them, who we now know, as a cautionary tale, are not very common.

This article starts:

Controlled drugs, with their potential for abuse and diversion, can pose public health risks that are different from—and more problematic than—those of uncontrolled drugs when they are overpromoted and highly prescribed.

We have an asinine situation now where these drugs are not only not prescribed, but they don't cost anything. They're not just highly prescribed; they're highly given out. There is no place in the world where anyone could possibly fathom that. Not only are these drugs, as we clearly know, dangerous and should be controlled, but they are now being given out by this government.

What did I say previously about fentanyl? We talked about fentanyl. What makes it so dangerous?

This is from Canada.ca:

It is 20 to 40 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. This makes the risk of accidental overdose very high.

Realistically, we know that hydromorphone is a little less potent than fentanyl—understandably. It is dosed in milligrams, not micrograms. We know very clearly that is very different. I understand that. That being said, for those who don't partake in opioids or haven't had the need to use opioids, we know these drugs are incredibly dangerous. Not only are they now highly prescribed; they are just given out. They are given out for free. How does that make any sense?

When we look at this.... This talks about an “in-depth analysis of the promotion and marketing of OxyContin”, which is also known as oxycodone. We know that:

When Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin in 1996, it was aggressively marketed and highly promoted. Sales grew from $48 million in 1996 to almost $1.1 billion in 2000.

Listen to this:

The high availability of OxyContin correlated with increased abuse, diversion, and addiction, and by 2004 OxyContin had become a leading drug of abuse in the United States.

It is certainly not different in Canada.

That was in 2004. It had a $1-billion market in 2000 in the United States, and in 2004, it had become the leading drug of abuse in the United States. That was in 2004. That was 19 years ago.

Nineteen years ago, everybody, it seems, knew that OxyContin was a leading drug of abuse in the United States, and here we are, decriminalizing.... I'm sorry. We are not just decriminalizing drugs in this crazed experiment, but we have a government that is giving out opioids—exceedingly potent opioids—for free. It's giving them away.

If anyone out there could possibly make any sense of the fact that we know what happened, as a cautionary tale, with OxyContin, oxycodone, beginning in the United States and the trickle-down effect into Canada, and now we have a government that seems to.... I can't even.... It defies my ability to understand how a government could possibly think that giving its cousin out for free would help an addiction, an overdose, an overdose death, homelessness, affordability or a cost of living crisis get any better. That does not make any sense at all. It is mind-boggling and mind-numbing. I don't have any ability to understand that.

This article continues:

Under current regulations, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is limited in its oversight of the marketing and promotion of controlled drugs. However, fundamental changes in the promotion and marketing of controlled drugs by the pharmaceutical industry, and an enhanced capacity of the FDA to regulate and monitor such promotion, can positively affect public health.

What we're talking about here is asking a pharmaceutical industry to change how these drugs are promoted and regulated.

What we have come to is a government that has effectively deregulated, unregulated and dysregulated. It has totally and absolutely gone against regulations by not just promoting a potent opioid but also giving it away for free. Think about it. If I have a product, why would I need to promote it if my objective is simply to give it away? I don't need to promote it if I'm giving it away.

On one side, we have a government in the United States realizing that pharmaceutical industries need to be more regulated in their promotion of opioids. On the other, we have a government north of the border giving away opioids and suggesting that, in the land of unicorns and fairy dust, this is making the opioid crisis—and again I'd use the superlative of crisis—better. It's doing that mind-numbingly, without any ability for me to understand that. When we go on and begin to understand that, we.... Some people say, “This is not related to hydromorphone or fentanyl.”

This article talks about it:

OxyContin’s commercial success did not depend on the merits of the drug compared with other available opioid preparations. The Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics concluded in 2001 [22 years ago] that oxycodone offered no advantage over appropriate doses of other potent opioids.

For people out there to say that hydromorphone is better than fentanyl or oxycodone.... Clearly, we know that, in esteemed, useful and well-read medical journals, this is absolutely total hogwash. There is no difference among these opioids at all. They are all incredibly dangerous. Where does that leave us? That leaves us....

Again, when we look at this, there are some other things here that talk about the relative potencies, but I think I will leave that out. I may come back to it.

I'll continue on:

The promotion and marketing of OxyContin occurred during a recent trend in the liberalization of the use of opioids in the treatment of pain, particularly for chronic non–cancer-related pain. Purdue pursued an “aggressive” campaign to promote the use of opioids in general and OxyContin in particular. In 2001 alone, the company spent $200 million [U.S.] in an array of approaches to market and promote OxyContin.

When you begin to look at that, it becomes very clear. I was a practising physician during those days. I clearly remember many edicts coming out of the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian College of Family Physicians and—I'm not entirely sure, but probably—the Canadian Pain Society suggesting that someone treating chronic non-cancer pain.... If physicians were not prescribing enough opioids to treat that pain, they were bad doctors.

Do you know what? That was wrong. We know it was wrong, but those of us who are physicians in this room know it happened. We saw those edicts come out of the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian College of Family Physicians and, as I said, probably the Canadian Pain Society, and we know in retrospect that was wrong. There were changes that came forward. They talked to physicians about how they should prescribe opioids in a more responsible fashion. There were also edicts that subsequently came out talking about how much morphine equivalence of opioid should be prescribed, because we knew these substances were being over-prescribed in a highly regulated fashion already.

Now what do we have? We have a government giving them away for free and continuing to ignore their own advice, which says that these substances need to be prescribed very carefully in small quantities and for short periods of time. We have a government giving them away for free in gigantic quantities for unlimited periods of time. Now, if that is not the exact opposite, I don't know what is.

We have people getting eight-milligram tablets of hydromorphone in quantities of—depending on which article you want to read from Adam Zivo—26, 32 or 34 tablets at a time. Now, if that is not big quantities of high-potency opioids given out in an unrestricted, long-term fashion, I don't know what is. This is the exact opposite of a careful, short-term, low-dose prescribing of opioids, which was suggested to physicians who should be controlling this.

It is mindless, and it continues to this day. Folks around this table then want to say, “Why is it? Why do Conservatives want to talk about opioids? Why do they want to talk incessantly about this?” Do you know what? It's because clearly the Liberal government does not get it. Until we say things over and over again, almost ad nauseam, it clearly appears not to be understood.

I do know that one of my colleagues, my colleague from the Bloc, referenced a motion that has been moved—I don't know whether it's been moved, but it's been tabled—to talk about the opioid experiment. If we had confidence on this side of the chamber we're in this evening that our colleagues would actually do the study, then maybe we wouldn't have to be here tonight talking about this over and over again.

One of my colleagues even deemed this, in this motion, to be an opioid experiment. Do you know what? When you have an experiment that has gone awry and is causing harm, every medical journal out there knows that you stop that experiment early. That's what you do. You don't continue it on. When you realize that people are dying because of the drug that you're using, you don't continue to do the experiment. You stop it. You stop the experiment, but what are the geniuses in the Liberal government doing? They are doubling down.

They are doubling down: “Let's fight the Conservatives on this.” We heard this from my colleague this evening. We have those on the opposite side who think this is a waste of time, that all we're doing is wanting to filibuster to get rid of Bill C-293. Really? There is enough in Bill C-293 that we could have talked about it for 10 more years. It's a terrible piece of legislation. It's utterly ridiculous. It is fraught with incredible jurisdictional contradictions, which my Bloc colleague could have talked about for the next six years, at least, on his own. He brought an expert here to talk about Bill C-293, and he talked about how bad the jurisdictional infractions were with respect to his great province of Quebec. Now it is suddenly only the Conservatives who are trying to get rid of Bill C-293.

I had an opportunity today to meet with the deans of the agricultural and veterinarian schools from across our great country. They have a huge problem with Bill C-293. I read them sections of the bill, and I informed them that we had one meeting here with witnesses on Bill C-293.

They were aghast when they read sections of Bill C-293. When I told them that we had one meeting with witnesses, they couldn't believe it. To think that a bill wants to influence the food that we eat and how it's produced here in this country—we know that farmers are the greatest stewards of farmland and of farm animals in this entire country—then we have the audacity of Liberal members suggesting we are using opioids as a way to filibuster Bill C-293. It's hogwash. It's petty politics—absolutely incredulous.

When I begin to look at the topic at hand, which I will return to, understanding the scourge that opioids have caused and continue to cause for innumerable Canadians, this is absolutely an unacceptable and untenable position.

We know—again, very clearly—that the cost of living crisis this government has created is continuing to cause significant problems for Canadians. I would suggest to you that this opioid crisis is allowing this to be perpetuated. I quote:

From 1996 to 2001, Purdue conducted more than 40 national pain-management and speaker-training conferences at resorts in Florida, Arizona, and California. More than 5000 physicians, pharmacists, and nurses attended these all-expenses-paid symposia, where they were recruited and trained for Purdue's national speaker bureau. It is well documented that this type of pharmaceutical company symposium influences physicians’ prescribing, even though the physicians who attend such symposia believe that such enticements do not alter their prescribing patterns.

Certainly, that's been a huge argument inside the medical community for a long time. Isn't it interesting, though, colleagues? What we're talking about is how a company could influence the prescribing habits of physicians, and what we have now is these drugs being given out for free and Liberal colleagues suggesting that this is an appropriate and acceptable type of behaviour.

As I said, we have a scholarly article talking about this being inappropriate. It's inappropriate to try to influence physicians, who are the appropriate people to write prescriptions. It's inappropriate for them to be influenced to write more prescriptions, but it's not inappropriate for a government to give away the same drugs for free. Wow. Again, I can't even wrap my mind around how that would make any sense at all. It is absolute nonsense. That's what it is.

This article goes on and talks about how they possibly did this, how much money they spent to try to change physicians' minds, how many doctors they convinced to do this and that they gave them fishing hats, stuffed plush toys and CDs. When you look at this now, what are we doing? You don't need to influence doctors, because the Liberal government is giving away opioids for free.

Don't worry, Canadians, because when you're addicted to these opioids that this Liberal-NDP coalition is giving you for free in its crazed experiment, what are they going to do? They're going to kill you.

It's nonsense. It's absolute nonsense to continue to allow the propagation of medical assistance in dying—the euphemism by which it has become known—a procedure that was destined for those who had uncontrolled pain and a reasonable, foreseeable death, to now being for folks who have suffering because of homelessness. Perhaps it's because they can't find a job, they can't afford a house because of the 40-year high inflation of this Liberal government, or they can't afford to feed themselves, put a roof over their heads and heat their homes for winter because they are addicted to opioids. This government is culpable in the creation of this problem.

We are now going to say, “Let's make the problem go away. Let's simply make it go away.” You know what the old saying is: Dead men can't talk. Let's let them go away and not be a problem, because we—not me and not those of us on this side, but this NDP-Liberal coalition—have created a problem that is uncomfortable. I cannot understand why they want to continue to stand up and defend it, and do not have the guts and the good decency to step forward and say, “This is wrong. We made a mistake.”

That's what grown-ups do when they make mistakes. They admit they're wrong and they move on from their mistakes.

This country has trusted them to run this country for eight long and miserable years. What do we have? We have an opioid crisis that is beyond parallel. I'll just go back to that number I talked about earlier. That number went from one person dying every three days to more than 20 people dying every single day in this country due to opioids.

This experiment is being perpetuated by this NDP-Liberal government coalition. They will not back down from their position. No matter what happens, it is very clear they won't back down. When my colleagues begin asking why we need to talk incessantly about a problem, it's because they don't get it. That is why.

We know very clearly that the NDP member of this committee is a full-blown supporter drug decriminalization and the Liberal members have a boss and a PMO bent on safe supply. That makes me able to really understand why they're reluctant to talk about this topic. We look at Mr. Davies' provincial counterparts in the B.C. NDP as prime examples. Tent cities, crime, chaos, drugs and disorder have become the norm under their leadership, where drug overdose is now the leading cause of death for kids between the ages of 10 and 18.

Do you know what, colleagues? I need to read that again: Drug overdose is now the leading cause of death for kids between the ages of 10 and 18. I have three grown children and I have two grandchildren. This scares the daylights out of me because this is not just in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton and every other big city. This is in every town and village across this great country of ours.

Folks, believe it or not, for roughly the past year, the Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP authorized the B.C. government to allow crack, heroine, cocaine and fentanyl around children's playgrounds. They had to then create another edict, suddenly, to say that you can't have drugs around playgrounds and in areas that children frequent.

Are you kidding me? Do we think that it is suddenly an acceptable part of Canadian life to have these drugs around where families and children are all the time? It took the year before an election recently for them to walk this policy back and before they finally prohibited open air drug use around these areas. Colleagues, we know that this happened within the last one month. Wow, you shouldn't use drugs around kids. It's shameful.

You would think that after eight long and miserable years of this Liberal government, there would be a change of heart. Do you know what? I know very clearly that there is not a change of heart. Tonight we saw the incredulous activities of colleagues on the opposite side, with the NDP-Liberal coalition suggesting that this was a simple ploy by Conservatives to get around Bill C-293.

Bill C-293 is a ridiculous piece of legislation that allows this Liberal government to not have an inquiry with respect to their pandemic response. As I said, it creates incredible jurisdictional difficulties related to attempting to force Canadians to change how they farm this great land and how they produce protein for Canadians. It's interesting. I'll go back to the deans of agriculture and veterinary colleges today. They know and they've said out loud that Canada could be the entire breadbasket for the world.

What do we have? We have the NDP-Liberal coalition wanting to stand in the way of that. They say that farmers are mean people and that they're mean to their animals. They are mean. They don't know how to take care of animals. They haven't done it ever. They are bad stewards of the land. They're over-users of fertilizers, and they are unknowledgeable in practices of farming.

Do we really want to believe this? It's shocking. It is incredibly shocking. My friends, this is the track that the NDP-Liberal coalition wants you to go down. This is the track where they want Canadians to begin to believe that farmers are bad people. I know a lot of farmers. They are not bad people. They are perhaps the most optimistic people I have ever met. To be a farmer, you have to be optimistic. Who could possibly think, at the beginning of every growing season, that you're going to have enough rain and enough sun—

October 25th, 2023 / 8:15 p.m.
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Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sean Casey

I think it's pretty clear that we're not going to get to Bill C‑293 today. That's as much a question as it is a statement, Mr. Doherty.

October 25th, 2023 / 7:30 p.m.
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Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sean Casey

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 84 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

In accordance with our routine motion, I am informing the committee that all remote participants have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, February 8, 2023, the committee is resuming consideration of Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness. We are resuming clause-by-clause consideration of this bill. Where we left off was at clause 3 and amendment CPC-4.

Mr. Doherty, please go ahead.

October 23rd, 2023 / 1:25 p.m.
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Bloc

Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC

Yes.

I move that Bill C‑293, in clause 3, at lines 25 and 26 on page 2, be amended by deleting the words “public health.”

October 23rd, 2023 / 1:25 p.m.
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Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sean Casey

All right, thank you.

The amendment is in order. I believe it has been circulated.

The debate is on the amendment that Bill C-293 in clause 3 be amended by deleting lines 24 to 27 on page 2.

Are there any interventions with respect to the amendment that is before us?

Seeing none, colleagues, are we ready for the question on BQ-1?

October 23rd, 2023 / noon
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Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I know you clarified that this was the first amendment, but is this still Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention?

October 23rd, 2023 / 11:25 a.m.
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Conservative

Stephen Ellis Conservative Cumberland—Colchester, NS

I have a point of order, Chair. It's directly related to the pandemic. It's the opioid crisis as it relates directly to the pandemic, which I believe is part of the bill that we'll talk about here, which, I might say, is an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness.

October 23rd, 2023 / 11:15 a.m.
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NDP

Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC

Mr. Chair, I have a point o f order. The current speaker is completely irrelevant to the subject under discussion. We are currently have business before the committee, which is to do a clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness. He's speaking about the opioid crisis, erroneous—

October 23rd, 2023 / 11 a.m.
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Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sean Casey

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 83 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

In accordance with our routine motion, I'm informing the committee that all remote participants have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting. We have Mr. Davies and Ms. May participating remotely.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, February 8, 2023, the committee is resuming its consideration of Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness. Today we are going to begin clause-by-clause consideration of this bill.

As you will have been informed by email, we have resources right up until question period, if needed. We will proceed until there is a motion for adjournment, until we get to the end of the agenda or until 1:50, probably, to allow people to get to question period. We'll see how it goes. I just want you to know that the ability to extend is there for us.

I would like to welcome the officials from the Public Health Agency of Canada who are here to answer any substantive questions you have as we go through the amendments. We have Stephen Bent, vice-president, strategic policy branch; Dr. Donald Sheppard, vice-president, infectious diseases and vaccination programs branch; and David Creasey, director general, strategic policy branch. They are here as a resource to us. We also have some folks from legislative services for any technical, legal or procedural questions with regard to the amendments. We are very well supported. Hopefully, that will contribute to our efficiency today.

I'd like to provide you with some instructions and a few comments on how we're going to proceed with clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-293.

As the name indicates, this is an examination of all the clauses in the order in which they appear in the bill. I'll call each clause successively, and each clause is subject to a debate and a vote. If there is an amendment to the clause in question, I will recognize the member proposing it, who may explain it but shouldn't feel compelled to launch into a lengthy explanation—because of the sheer volume. The amendment will then be open for debate.

When no further members wish to intervene, the amendment will be voted on. Amendments will be considered in the order in which they appear in the bill or in the package that each member received from the clerk. Members should note that amendments must be submitted in writing to the clerk of the committee. The ones that were provided in writing to the clerk of the committee to date are reflected in your package.

We'll go as slowly as we need to in order to allow all members to follow the proceedings properly.

Each amendment has been given a number, in the top right corner, to indicate which party submitted it. There is no need for a seconder to move an amendment. Once it's been moved, you will need unanimous consent to withdraw it.

During debate on an amendment, members are permitted to move subamendments. These subamendments must also be submitted in writing. They don't require the approval of the mover of the amendment. Only one subamendment may be considered at a time, and that subamendment cannot be further amended. When a subamendment to an amendment is moved, it is voted on first. Then another subamendment may be moved, or the committee may consider the main amendment and vote on it, which is a procedure you are familiar with from the general moving of motions in this committee.

Mr. Doherty.

October 18th, 2023 / 9:40 p.m.
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Conservative

The Vice-Chair Conservative Stephen Ellis

Thank you very much, Mr. Davies.

I will try once again. This time, we are out of time. I want to thank the witnesses for staying later. Those of you not in this time zone, obviously we thank you even more.

That being said, I hope the information was valuable to you all. Hopefully, you enjoyed the discourse we had beforehand.

I have a bit of committee business. This is a reminder to members that the deadline to submit amendments to Bill C‑293 is this coming Friday at noon.

In our next meeting, on Monday, we'll be doing clause-by-clause consideration of this bill, Bill C‑293.

Thank you all for indulging the newness of this chairmanship to me.

Also, on behalf of this committee, I would like to wish our usual chair, Mr. Casey, Godspeed in what he is going through at the current time.

Is it the will of the committee to adjourn?

October 18th, 2023 / 9:35 p.m.
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Bloc

Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC

The Standing Committee on Health sat through the entire pandemic. It's one of the only committees to have done so, and there are three of us MPs here who lived through the pandemic on the committee without ever looking to blame anyone. Instead, we looked for solutions.

I believe that Bill C‑293 puts the cart before the horse and that we must first know what happened before claiming to have solutions. For example, how can we explain that the global public health information network could have been so ineffective, failing to raise the red flag in time and allow personal protective equipment to be sent to China, when our own stockpile was empty? The fact that in Quebec our CHSLDs, our long term care centres, ran out of masks had consequences.

Getting the answer to this question seems important to me, and I don't think an advisory committee could get to the bottom of the issue. Without looking for culprits, we first need to know what we've done, what we could do differently, and then propose a plan of action. A law won't fix this; we already have everything we need to do so.

Do you have any comments on the matter, Dr. Barrett?

October 18th, 2023 / 9:25 p.m.
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Professor and Associate Director of the Centre for Constitutional and Administrative Law Studies, Faculty of Law, Université Laval, As an Individual

Patrick Taillon

No, this is not an investigation. Bill C‑293 is forward-looking. Unfortunately, I'm afraid it's a diversion to avoid making an assessment that would be desirable. Ultimately, it's up to each administration to do its own assessment.

I think the agency could, on its own initiative, learn from experiences it has had in recent years. I'm afraid that by trying to anticipate a future crisis, we're sparing ourselves the critical examination that should be done to answer questions that are nonetheless quite simple. For example, why was the federal government so slow to manage borders? Why was it so slow to remove border obstacles? Why was it so difficult for it to manage vaccine supplies? These are matters for which the federal government is directly responsible. These are the questions we need to prioritize.